Jason Clinton wrote:

> Let the flame wars begin:
> 
> http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/index.php
> 
> The most interesting observations I've made so far:
> 
>    * Bash (using standard unixisms) being included is kinda fun -- it
>      almost always lost, as well; if I had to guess I would think it
>      has to do with piping around the results of running the commands
>      in C and overhead for starting and stopping a lot of processes to
>      do one little thing
>    * I've always thought of Perl as outperforming all other language
>      having been around the longest but Python beat Perl in almost
>      every test.
>    * PHP abysmally lost almost every time -- interesting given that its
>      running so many web sites; Ruby also performed horribly despite
>      being a popular new language
>    * Java performed marginally better than all scripting languages in
>      all but a few tests. Java's memory consumption was astronomically
>      high, though
>    * Code complexity is also rated in these tests; take a look at the
>      C++ vs. Python on the Spell Checker test, for instance

On the "Reverse A File" problem I noticed the following:

  - The bash solution is downright funny.
  - The gcc solution used more memory than the bash solution.
  - I would've expected the gforth solution to fare better.  Maybe
    it's an iterpreted-vs-compiled issue.

> <>The site has some bugs. PHP code cannot be viewed due to web server
> configuration; Python code is linked incorrectly: you have to take the
> .psycho off the end to see the code. The author invites language GURU's
> to submit higher performing versions of the code on the site. Also, read
> the disclaimer.
> 
>